Deliveries

[shewhomust]

The Parcelforce driver who brought my wholefoods order hammered on the door instead of ringing the bell; luckily we were in the kitchen, and heard him. We asked if the bell wasn't working, and he replied that there were germs on the bell push.

I think that's unlikely. No-one has rung the bell for several days - quite a large value of several, before the weekend at least. But he didn't lnow that, so let's interpret what he said as there might be germs ... Might there? I know there are reasons to disinfect surfaces and handrails and things that people have touched recently, but how long might a virus linger on a bell push in the open air? Does anyone know? Anyway, durham_rambler has made a notice saying "This is a big house and we may not hear you knock. If you don't want to ring the bell, please telephone ...

Mysteriously, the box he delivered was labelled 'number 2 of 2', but he didn't have another one, and the contents tally with the whole of my order. So I have flour, and sugar, and vanilla pods to make vanilla sugar.

And it was only when I opened the door to that delivery that I realised the post had come, and included a lovely postcard from hunningham, Uccello's hunting party, tiny people in vivid red dwarfed by the tall trees of the dark forest. Which cheered me immensely.

Comments

[lamentables]

I have a permanent sign saying ‘please use doorbell’ but still struggle with delivery people who prefer to knock because the doorbell might disturb me...?

[shewhomust]

We have gone to a lot of trouble to select from the doorbell's many curious options the one that is most likely to disturb us ...

[cmcmck]

And if there were, why wasn't he wearing gloves?

All our delivery peeps have been.

Where did you get the flour from? I'm struggling!

[shewhomust]

Gloves, as I understand it, are second best to handwashing. But yes, that's his choice.

I used Buy Wholefoods Online; they seem OK.

[anef]

Delivery services are under a lot of pressure right now. I ordered some stuff online from Boots and they sent it to me twice, once packed in three parcels, and then again in one.

As it's stuff I would be re-ordering in 3 months anyway I thought I might as well pay for the extra delivery, and spent longer than I really wanted to emailing and phoning them to try to arrange payment. No they couldn't just issue an invoice, I needed to talk to customer services. Anyway, sorted now.

[shewhomust]

Oh yes, I am currently relying so much on people who are prepared to deliver, one way or another, and this was really not meant to be a winge about the delivery man (well, maybe a bit: he was very abrupt). Mostly I wanted to know, does he have a point? Should I be more concerned about germs loitering indefinitely on surfaces outdoors (and I am more reassured than is entirely rational by the failure the the internet to tell me that yes, I absolutely should ...)